Dry Scales Do Comfort Prisoners
by MochaCocaFan
Summary: I'm just givin' it all, givin' it all away/ I'm just givin' it all, giving it all away,... --The first snake Kimimaro encountered wasn't Orochimaru. Far from it.--


Snakes.

They weren't slimy or evil per se, but warm and nice and comforting and familiar and dry and _pretty_. Their scales gleamed in what little light shone into the cage, their eyes apprehensive as they gazed at the small, feminine figure in the cell. Kimimaro sat there in the darkness, staring at a world only he could see. A quiet, flute-mimicking (this is why he tolerates Tayuya in all of her bad-mouthing glory later; her flute reminds him of a snake's hiss) hiss from the snake made him blink a little and snap back to painful, painful reality. The reptile slithered over to the tiny albino, and _GOD_ is he tiny. It's not surprising, exactly, when you think of the lack of food consumption going on, but you still don't expect an eight-year-old to be that small.

He turned his head towards the snake, a little confused. What is that? Why is that here? Why is it staring at him (and yes, it _is_ staring, not just gazing curiously like a kitten looking at a lake for the first time)? He reached out a hand, because he's a _child_ for God's sake, though he may be stronger and quieter later on, he will still be a child in a lot of ways later on.

The snake doesn't recoil, doesn't flinch at the hand, and even though neither know it, that is not normal. Normal snakes flinch and draw back at the slightest touch of humans. They were different than humans in this way: while a child will extend a hand (or mouth, depending on their level of development) to whatever draws their beautiful, yet deadly curiosity. Snakes hate anything they do not already know. That is why snake children are left alone for their childhood (if they could be defined as children, which is debatable), because their parents, being the selfish sonuvabitches they are, are totally unfamiliar to the fine art of parenting (more like an endless, exhausting chore with no escape) and as such abandoned their eggs.

Come to think of it, that sounded an awful lot like politicians.

But as Kimimaro was far too young to know about politicians, he would not make this connection until far later, when he was at useless (at least in his sparkling, pain-filled emeralds that could hardly be called _eyes_) dinner parties designed to entice fools with more money than brains over to Orochimaru-sama (because he is, at least in according to Kimimaro, the embodiment of what _-sama_ is supposed to be) and what is his crazed gathering of trash named Otogakure.

But I digress.

Anyways, as the serpent slithered on its stomach (or _was_ it its stomach, for snake anatomy was not extensively studied at this point in the life of the bone-manipulator- though _is_ it manipulation if the bones are not sentient?) towards him, the albino child realized, startlingly, that maybe, just _maybe_, it could be a friend.

So he relaxes his muscles (why was he tense in the first place? He will ponder later. Is there something frightening about snakes? Is it just a primitve, useless, unfounded terror? Is that why common -and often bloody- trash hate them? Perhaps he will never know...) and unclenches his mind and opens himself to the snake, and it slithers over and crawls on his lap. The snake stays a long, long time (or was it so? Time is impossible to determine in near-darkness) and when it leaves, it comes back.

That is why, after the bloodied fight and the horror of watching his family (if the bastards could ever be called that) die one by one and staring endlessly (though if it _was_ endless, then he would still be there, wide-eyed with shock more intense than any other he will _ever_ feel) at the pile of cadavers, so similar (and yet so different) to him, he accepts the apple from the serpent.

Because snakes aren't horrible and evil and slimy. They're friendly and he will never ever forget the warm dry glittering scales of the snakeling that came to visit him, that was his first friend.


End file.
